


And I Would Give You The Stars

by manic_intent



Series: When in Midgard [3]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Arc Reactor Kink, M/M, Riding, Thor likes to be Helpful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 07:18:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony frankly hadn't thought very much about things when he had told Thor that he was going to fix the Bifrost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Would Give You The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: In light of the fantastic Avengers movie, I tried to rework this 'verse to kind of align into canon. Not sure how well that worked out, but um, this was fun?

I.

Tony frankly hadn't thought very much about things when he had told Thor that he was going to fix the Bifrost. Granted, Tony's brain didn't usually allocate much brain power to things that didn't have to do with experimental technology, alcohol, sex and the Iron Man suit, and he was kind of blissfully fucked out at the time, but on hindsight he probably shouldn't have missed the way Thor had leaned up onto his elbows to study him, all intensity and none of his usual puppyish grins. 

Still, if a man couldn't be given _some_ leeway to ignore obvious visual cues when he was in the state of passing out into a sex-induced coma caused by a Norse God, then Tony was going to have to harbour some grave doubts about polite civilisation. 

Anyway. 

He woke up to the room looking as though - well - as though a thunderstorm had gone through it, and that was probably just a literal way of describing things. Rubbing his eyes, Tony frowned at the upturned drawers, the disembowelled wardrobe and, grinning expectantly and triumphantly at him from the desk in the bedroom, one Thunder God in full armour, with an overstuffed duffel bag. 

"You know, usually people just take a couple of thongs with them for luck, not _all_ my clothes," Tony's brain didn't really deal well with mornings, either.

"Friend Natasha informed me that humans 'pack' when they embark on sagas." 

"Well, _you're_ not human," Tony noted blankly, then when Thor's grin widened, he sat up so sharply that a full body ache shot up his spine and his legs. Last night had probably been overdoing it a little. "Wait. Am I meant to be somewhere right now?" Pepper was usually pretty good at giving him an earful if he forgot trivial things like investor conferences. 

"We shall leave for Asgard. I have notified Heimdall - he will be expecting us. Father will summon us back to Asgard from one of the leyscales when we are ready."

Tony blinked slowly, then he rubbed his eyes. "What?"

"Were you not going to fix the Bifrost?"

Oh. _Oh_. Tony silently cursed Sexed-Up-Tony. Morning-After-Tony was never mentally equipped to deal with his shit. "Um. Well. You see, when I said I was going to fix it, it was kinda not for a certain degree of 'now'," he hedged, then he swallowed when Thor's brilliant grin faded a fraction, then he added, desperately, "Let me call Pepper, all right? And maybe you should, er, talk to Fury about this or something, he's been busting my balls over the new helicarrier designs."

"I shall consult Fury," Thor agreed, and padded off, ostensibly to fly to the Triskelion. Confident that he'd at least ruined someone else's morning, Tony rolled onto his face and groaned.

Fifteen minutes later, in lieu of asphyxiating, Tony answered his insistently vibrating phone. "Stark."

"Tony, are you still in bed?" Pepper asked, in the calm way she got whenever she was setting up a Trap. Tony knew all the signs.

"Maybe."

"How is it that you've managed to get into trouble while you're _still in bed_?" Pepper's voice rose a fraction. Danger signs. Tony tried to kick Morning-After-Tony's brain into gear.

"Specify."

"I just received a _lovely_ phone call from Director Stark," Pepper retorted, "Apparently you've 'kindly' offered to go to Asgard right now to fix their 'transdimensional bridge'."

"I didn't say _right now_ ," Tony moaned, eyeballing the door and wishing that he'd thought about programming JARVIS to materialize coffee. His brain wasn't awake enough to handle Warpath-Pepper. "Talk to Fury. Get Fury to talk to Thor. Or use Cap. Thor listens to Cap. Surely Cap will help. He helps old ladies cross roads."

" _You_ can talk to him, can't you?" Pepper asked impatiently. "Tony, you can't leave now on some... some _trip_ for God knows how long. You've got that clean energy seminar tomorrow in Washington where you're the key speaker. The _President_ will be there! Then you have a stakeholder conference in Osaka with the new manufacturers. A board meeting on Friday-"

Morning-After-Tony's brain temporarily switched into autopilot as Tony briefly considered coffee-materialization formulas, and then railroaded itself into transdimensional rifts; nowadays, even alien invasions tended to be more interesting than his usual schedule - but it woke back up again when Pepper concluded with an explosive sigh and a, "Just try not to create an interplanetary incident, all right? Fury was convinced that you'd end up starting a war or something."

"What? I'm cleared to go?" Tony blinked rapidly. "Really?" 

"Yes, Tony, really." Pepper sounded faintly amused. "SHIELD made a very attractive offer and Fury has offered to make excuses if necessary. So as CEO of your company, I'm seconding you out to the Asgardians."

"But," Tony frowned, "But I don't even know what tech they have. I don't even know if they have _electricity_. How am I supposed to build _anything_ over there? I haven't even thought up any blueprints!"

"You managed pretty well in Afghanistan," Pepper told him, brutal as ever. "Just bring some gear with you. And don't offend anyone. Please."

"They'll love me," Tony muttered, and rubbed his face with the flat of his palm. He had really been looking forward to spending the next week tinkering with the Mark Four armour, too. "Fuck."

"You only have yourself to blame," Pepper said unmercifully, and hung up.

Two hours later, Tony had cleaned up, repacked his clothes (sixteen pairs of socks and only one set of underwear? Seriously?), and was in the middle of trying to condense his lab into something movable when Thor ambled down into the lab, looking expectant. "I have spoken to Fury."

"Went well?"

"After a fashion," Thor seemed pleased with himself. "He understands necessity. The Bifrost is more than just a mode of travel. It is one of the lynchpins of Asgardian civilisation."

"No pressure, huh." Tony sighed. He had several crates of components, all of Selvig's findings and notes, a laptop, and another prototype miniature arc reactor. This was going to have to do for now. "All right. Let's go to your place."

II.

Whoever designed Asgard was probably a long lost distant Stark relative - the entire _city_ seemed to be gold plated. It was _awesome_. Tony had to be all but bodily dragged into the throne room as he gawked at the huge golden columns and the gigantic hallways, the ornate, elegant carvings and the rich tapestries that lined the palace. Outside, through the wide windows, Tony could see the golden spires of Asgardian civilisation, spread out into the horizon, gleaming in the afternoon sun. He felt like he was in a fucking _Tolkien_ movie that had been liberally jazzed up with swag.

"Father," Thor addressed the throne formally, then he switched to a tongue that definitely sounded Nordic, all angular consonants. Tony was beginning to feel distinctly underdressed in an old Metallica shirt and gray jeans; because _yes_ , of _course_ he was going to meet Thor's parents, and now that Morning-After-Tony's brain had ceded the field to Operational-Tony, this was just beginning to frighten him. 

He was meeting Thor's _parents_. 

Right _now_.

Meeting the parents had never, in Tony's experience, ever gone well before.

Thor's dad looked like what Nick Fury would turn into in a billion years' time if he didn't moisturize: Odin the Allfather wore a grim expression as though it had been carved into his face, sharp lines of worry etched into his skin, a thick mane of gray hair merging into a beard that ran over his ornate armour. Beside the throne was a woman who had probably been lovely when she was in her prime, slender and graceful, her lips pursed as she glanced between Tony and Thor.

Tony grew bored when Thor started gesturing at the crates that his equally muscular friends had helped carry into the throne room as though they'd weighed nothing, and was furtively staring at the tiling on one of the wall mosaics when Thor's mother inhaled sharply, and some of the guardsmen lining the walls shifted and glanced at each other. Tony stared at Thor, puzzled, who merely continued to speak in High Gibberish until the Allfather straightened on his throne, looking even more solemn.

"Anthony Howardson," Odin addressed him, in perfect English. It was weird. Either the Asgardians had some sort of hidden translator tech, or they knew how to speak English. Tony was betting on the former. "Well met." 

"Actually," Tony noted, wincing, "Just 'Tony' would be fine." 

"You have told my son that you would fix the Bifrost."

"Well, I said that I would try-"

"The best of our..." Odin hesitated, as though searching for a correct word, then he added, "The best of our engineers and architects have studied the Bifrost over the centuries and have been unable to replicate it. The relay within it did not belong to our civilisation - it was an artefact from another, far older." 

"I'll love to take a look at it, then," Tony perked up. Operational-Tony _loved_ alien tech.

"I appreciate your enthusiasm," Odin noted, though he shot Thor a hard stare. "And I hope that you appreciate the trust that my son has placed on your shoulders."

Operational-Tony also had the added feature of verbal minefield detection, installed after the long, tempestuous and ultimately painfully unworkable relationship with Pepper. They'd parted friends, with the regrets mostly on Tony's side, and he'd learned. Slowly. With the aid of a lot of recreational drugs and alcohol. And it was pretty damned obvious that he was missing something big, here. "I will." He was going to have to have a _long_ talk with Thor.

"You may show him to the ley chamber," Odin turned to Thor. "Keep the consequences of your decisions close in mind."

"I will, Father," Thor replied, and Tony drifted off again during the unnecessarily lengthy formal parting spiel, and allowed himself to be hustled out of the throne room with relief. 

"What happened in there?" Tony asked, when they were hopefully out of earshot, moving through wide corridors towards a higher floor. Asgardian architecture seemed to favour large balconies and huge corridors - probably taking flight-capable citizens into consideration. 

"Father is..." Thor hesitated for a moment, unusually, then he continued, "We do not often have visitors from alien species." 

"Really? Because you guys have - or had, anyway - a working fucking _controlled wormhole_. I thought you'd have been all over the First Contact sort of stuff."

"When we do, the visits often create wars," Thor admitted, then he grinned, again puppyish. "As such, Asgard has grown insular. But I am sure that this will not be a problem."

"Right." Tony swallowed, and made a gigantic, highlighted, neon mental note for Operational-Tony not to fuck this one up. Not that doing that often helped. He began to wish that he had brought Pepper. Or maybe even Fury. "Is that why your mom and dad were acting as though you'd dragged in some sort of snail and claimed that it could fix the TV?"

Behind him, one of the Warriors Three guffawed, the big, barrel-chested one. Tony concentrated, trying to remember names. Volstagg. The evident brains of the group, the gorgeous leggy brunette, trotted up to Thor's side, frowning. "Did you not explain to your _sváss_ what taking him here entailed?"

Thor glanced at Tony, then he looked back over to Sif and said something in High Gibberish. Sif retorted, Hogun interjected, Fandral said something placating, and then Thor said another phrase, this time firmly, that shut all his friends up. Feeling rather tired of being left out of the loop, Tony raised a hand. "Translation for the vanilla human, please?"

"The Bifrost is..." Thor hesitated, as though thinking about words, "Very important to Asgard. Father was surprised when I recommended a non-Asgardian to repair it."

Sif narrowed her eyes at Thor, but Thor was grinning in his puppyish way at Tony, which never failed to do fucked up things even to Operational-Tony's fully functional logic systems. "Well, um, we should help each other out, right? I mean, you helped us out on Earth." He didn't add that both messes on Earth were of Asgard origin, technically, but he was being Diplomatic. See. Operational-Tony could totally rock diplomacy. Pepper would be proud.

"Exactly!" Thor rumbled, clearly happy to Be On The Same Page, as Fury tended to put it. Tony blamed Fury for some of Thor's behaviour. Positive conditioning had clearly ensured that Thor derived far too much pleasure from Understanding Midgardian Customs. 

Grimly, Tony rubbed at his eyes again, in the vain hopes that he'd wake up curled in bed, sans stupid promises made to alien life forms. "Is it possible to get coffee in this place?"

III.

"When you said that you 'broke' the Bifrost," Tony said slowly, as he examined the pieces of wreckage that had been moved to the 'ley chamber', "I didn't think that you meant that you 'atomized' it." 

The ley chamber was a cavernous room with a fantastic view of Asgard, opening out into one of those broad balconies that looked out towards the shattered spit that once presumably held the fragmented alien device sitting in the middle of the chamber. The ground was liberally carved with Norse symbols, and, Tony noted, depressingly there seemed to be no power source whatsoever. 

The Bifrost was in many, many, _many_ pieces in the room, cracked open like a golden egg, and Tony ignored the structural whimsies to pick his way to the centre of the ordered mess - a metal spool layered around a now inert core of a material he couldn't quite identify. "JARVIS?"

"Good morning, Mister Stark," JARVIS said from the prototype wristband that Tony had thankfully constructed out of boredom about a couple of months back when brainstorming through an interminable director's meeting.

"Scan and export everything to workboard." 

"Processing," JARVIS noted, and the Warriors Three murmured among themselves as the wristband projected blue grids, scanning the wreckage slowly. Thor smiled at him from the balcony, already clearly bored with the whole business. The Asgardians might supposedly be from a world so advanced that tech _was_ magic, but it was comforting to see that there were always going to be philistines who would have no interest whatsoever in the nuts and bolts. Handsome, inhumanly strong philistines with crazy stamina in bed, but still.

"You guys can go," Tony suggested. "I'll take some time. Need to set up and everything. Um. Grim faced here can keep me company." 

Heimdall briefly broke his singular Glowering Gargoyle impression to glance at him, lips thinned, but Thor nodded, looking relieved. "Have Heimdall send word to me when you have had enough for the day. I shall show you my homeworld."

"Sure," Tony said, already distracted, as JARVIS brought up a holographic console and readings. The world's tabloids might not know it, but for Tony, the greatest high in the world wasn't sex and alcohol but tech that he didn't understand, and here he was probably _mired_ in it. He jumped when Thor strode close, blinking, then yelped when he was swept up into a kiss, tongue and noises and all, and he was breathless when Thor finally let him go.

"Until later, then," Thor told him, beard tickling his nose as the Norse God brushed lips with odd tenderness over his forehead, then he was striding out of the door, the Warriors Three in his wake, leaving Tony blinking dumbly behind him. Thor wasn't usually demonstrative in public, particularly after Tony had patiently explained exactly _why_ it was a problem, what with tabloids and Fury's blood pressure and all. Clearly Thor had decided that the Rule Against PDA didn't apply to Asgard, which was going to be awkward.

Mentally erasing images of being smote by Odin the Allfather for being caught necking with his son in public, Tony set himself to unpacking. "So, um, Heimdall, was it?"

Heimdall glanced at him briefly before looking back out of the balcony. "Yes."

"What can you tell me about the Bifrost? Thor told me that you used to operate it."

Heimdall regarded him again with that unnervingly intense stare. "What can you understand about it?" 

Okay. That was hurtful. "I know that it creates a controlled Einstein-Rosen bridge - a wormhole - to effect travel. I know that it's connected to relay points on Earth, though how the hell you guys managed to carve one in Central Park kinda beats me. You loop paths through four dimensional space to anchor paths, powered by kinesythesizing dark energy from artefacts like the Tesseract and whatever this was that Thor broke with his hammer-"

Heimdall's outward appearance didn't change, but his tone seemed to turn a fraction less frosty. "Perhaps Thor's actions have some method behind them this time." 

"What," Tony asked, fascinated, "Does he usually bring girlfriends or boyfriends home and tell his Dad that they can replicate alien tech?"

Heimdall regarded him solemnly for another long, unnerving moment, then he turned his gaze away when Tony's eyes began to water. "It is not my place to speak of such things. If you have specific questions regarding the construction of the Bifrost, inform me."

Still awkward.

On the other hand, _Selvig_ had managed to build a Chitauri version of the controllable wormhole tech on Earth, albeit powered by Stark Tower. So the groundwork had already been done. Cheered, Tony started assembling his generator, only for Pocket JARVIS to abruptly fizzle into static when he walked backwards. Frowning, Tony stepped to the side, and the interference was gone.

He'd just stepped off one of the weird runic circles. Curious, Tony stepped back onto it. Static. Stepped off. All systems go. Fascinated, he knelt down to examine the carving. "Is there something underneath this?" 

"It is a leyscale." Heimdall rumbled to life. "In your language... it is a physical manifestation of pure code. The code of natural Creation. That is a nullification scale. There are hundreds of others, with hundreds of different purposes. The ones on Earth that linked to the Bifrost were anchor scales." There was a pause, then Heimdall added, just as flatly, "Understand that this is a simplification. Your language has few correlating terms."

It was going to be a _long_ afternoon.

IV.

Somewhere along the line, Tony was vaguely aware of being fed something that was somewhat stew-like in appearance. Sustenance usually took a back seat when scientific discovery was close at hand, and if not for Heimdall's million-watt stare, Tony would have just pushed the food around the plate to show willing and forgotten about it. 

Absorbed in the readings that JARVIS had pulled up about leyscales, Tony barely noticed even Thor's presence until a big hand clapped down on his shoulder. Yelping, he almost fumbled the piece of the inertia core that he was handling. "Jesus!"

"You should rest," Thor announced. Suggestions, in Tony's experience, wasn't ever part of Thor's usual set of social graces. If Thor decided that Tony had had enough for the day, then it was usually better not to argue.

"All right," Tony agreed, if reluctantly. "If I could just-"

"Now, Tony."

"Fine, fine," Tony grumbled. "JARVIS, run the parameters. I want to see the readings in the morning."

"Good night, Mister Stark. Try to rest," JARVIS told him firmly, from the console hooked up to the generator taking readings from a selection of leyscales. Traitor.

Yawning and rubbing his eyes, Tony stretched, grimacing when he heard something along his back make a distinctly creaky noise. "All right. I'm all yours… _hey_!" 

Thor had grinned at that, and curled an arm around his waist, and before Tony could react, they were zooming up and through the balcony at a speed that tore fingers of wind through his hair. Thor was lucky that Tony liked to fly around like this for fun, Tony felt, as his stomach readjusted itself, and then they were floating, high up in the sky, a half moon pale and wan over twists of gray clouds, and beneath them, Asgard lay in a gleaming puzzle of towers and plazas and endless waterfalls, silver cliffs and exquisite gardens. It was alien in its beautiful, geometric symmetry, and for a long moment, even Operational-Tony had nothing to say, drinking greedily in a sight that no mortal eye had probably ever beheld. 

Thor was swinging his hammer in a lazy loop beside him, which was somehow keeping them aloft, and the wind was chill but bearable, but it gave Tony the excuse to creep an arm around Thor's waist to pull himself closer.

"Thank you," Tony said finally, because he felt that he had to say _something_. "It's amazing."

Thor nodded, and there was something almost… _soft_ , in his expression, like sentiment. "Aye."

"I can't really imagine why you'd want to leave this and go slumming on Midgard, actually."

"Midgard has its benefits," Thor stated expansively, with a playful, sidelong look. "Though your mead is weak and your technology rudimentary."

Tony had thankfully got all the girly blushing thing out of his system when he was about fourteen years of age; instead, he plastered on his best wicked grin instead. "Really, tell me more."

"It is not becoming for a man to enjoy praise," Thor told him, though his arm tightened, pulling Tony closer, until their bodies were flush together. "So my Father has said."

" _My_ dad always said that honesty was better than modesty," Tony retorted, slipping his arms up over those big, broad shoulders to drag himself up for a kiss, slow and sloppy, licking into Thor's mouth until the Thunder God rumbled with pleasure.

Thor's bed was kind of awesome. It was bigger than Tony's, for one, and it was covered in soft furs and sheets without somehow managing to look like barbarian kitsch against the golden walls and columns. Tony curled himself over the thick gray top layer of pelt and moaned appreciatively, rubbing his cheek over the rich fur. Possibly it wasn't politically correct to enjoy the moment, and somewhere a PETA representative had probably shit himself, but hey, alien homeworld.

"A wind serpent's underbelly," Thor told him, even as he ran his big palms up under Tony's shirt with barely concealed impatience. "It was a good hunt. Niflheim holds challenging prey."

"Yeah? Tell me about it," Tony purred, not really because he was interested in Thor's hunting stories, but Thor's voice was _amazing_ when it got husky, like the edge of a gathering storm. Thor grinned at him even as he tugged Tony's shirt up and off him, running his big palms slowly upwards, over his ribs, to press his thumbs lightly and teasingly over the rim of the arc reactor. Close, Christ, he was already _close_ \- 

Tony didn't realize that he'd held on to a breath until Thor laughed. "Breathe, Anthony Howardson."

"Call me that again and you're fucking sleeping alone tonight," Tony shot back, though he pulled impatiently at Thor's shoulders when Thor leaned down to take his mouth, deeper, harder, big hands curling up over his shoulders and pinning him down, Gods yes, the way Tony loved it, his jeans were too tight and Thor's armour was always too fucking fiddly-

"We were younger then," Thor intoned, his voice deepening a fraction when Tony snarled and clawed at catches until he'd dislodged the cloak. "Father had given me leave to take a hunting party to Niflheim. It was my name day." 

"Name day?" Tony repeated, even as he managed to scrabble hard enough at catches to unbuckle Thor's breastplate. Thor chuckled, mouthing hot against his neck, beard bristling over his jaw, and Tony whined and arched at the touch of teeth over his jugular.

"You Midgardians have a similar custom. 'Birth Days', you call it, save that you celebrate yours once a winter, rather than once a century."

Tony sucked in a breath, squeezing his eyes shut to force down the dirty, hot flush of lust that surged through him at Thor's words. Reminders of Thor's immortality? Hot. Clint once said that he had a divinity kink. Tony preferred to think of it as having a scientist's healthy appreciation for the existence of the patently impossible.

"So you got a hunting permit for your birthday."

"I gather that the negotiations were extensive," Thor leaned back briefly to tug off his undershirt, even as the breastplate was shoved off the bed without ceremony. Tony managed the belt with somewhat more panache, tugging it off, then he yelped when Thor bent to press the flat of his tongue against the lowest rim of the arc reactor and lick his way _up_ , slow and dirty and Jesus, Thor's weird-as-fuck Thunder-God-lightning synergy-inducing power spike never, ever failed to make Tony slam into orgasm so hard that it left him breathless. 

And he still had his pants on. Bastard.

"Cheat… cheating," Tony stuttered, dazed and boneless even as the arc reactor slowly slipped back into normal processing. Thor chuckled, a rough catch to his tone now as he stripped them both of the rest of their clothes and push Tony's knees apart. "Just go, I'll catch up."

Instead of pressing fingers into him immediately, however, Thor leant up to kiss him, big palms cupped around his cheeks and yeah, maybe there was something Tony should be paying attention to here, if he could work any brain power through the blissed out haze of satiation.

"Thor," Tony tried anyway, then growled, "Yeah, fuck, come _on_ ," when Thor turned him around and nipped him hard just under the nape of his neck, over the knob of his spine, and licked up slow, body pressed hot and unyielding against his back, his nice, fat cock a teasing fit against his ass. "I don't think I need prep, come on, get inside me, I want it, nfft-" 

Thor chuckled - bastard - when Tony choked on the big fingers pressed into his mouth, then he growled when Tony rasped his teeth against the roughened pads and sucked, lapping wetly until the digits were soaked. Buzzed and loose-limbed from his first orgasm, he barely noticed the stretch, panting impatiently and angling up his hips until Thor finally pushed inside him, thick and gritty until he slid all the way home and Jesus but Tony was _ruined_. He'll never have it this good from anyone else.

Big hands set tight over his hips and there was a low, rumbling laugh that shook up against him, over his spine, as though Thor had heard him, then Thor was murmuring hotly against his ear, "Ready to catch up?"

"You're going to kill me one day," Tony told him, breathless and tight already from anticipation, arched against the inhuman, animal heat of Thor's body and panting for it already. Gods, he was so _full_ , it was amazing. "Yeah. Give it to me."

Thor hummed, even as Tony drew himself up onto his elbows to watch as big fingers trailed up his belly. A thumb rubbed up the reactor, over to the glow, and Tony had to clench his teeth hard to stifle a whimper, the electric pulse a pure shot of heady ecstasy. Dimly, he was aware of Thor slipping his hand back down to wrap big fingers around him as he began to rock into him, then Thor - Thunder God Thor - was cursing something in High Gibberish as Tony moaned and rocked back and clenched.

Incredibly, Thor didn't take the invitation for what it fucking was and go to town; instead, he brought both his hands up to Tony's hips instead, holding him still as he drew back - slow, too godsdamned slowly - and shoved back in, stroking dirty-rough-hot up against Tony's prostate. 

" _Thor_ ," Tony whined, fingers clawed into the sheets, and because his brain was always punch drunk when Thor did the reactor trick, begged thickly, "Please."

"I was relating my hunting saga as you requested," Thor told him calmly, and Tony turned to stare over his shoulder at Thor in disbelief, only to get a playful grin in return. "Patience, Anthony Howardson."

Tony groaned. "Stop mentioning my dad. It's a miracle that you haven't killed my hard on. Christ."

"Niflheim," Thor ignored him, his voice a warm, husky intonation against the back of Tony's neck, "Is an unforgiving place-" 

At some point, Tony stopped listening to the surprisingly convoluted story, strung out from want and suspended just before the edge, elbows and knees aching at each deep thrust and his voice torn raw from begging, breathing in heaving sobs and it was good, so good that it hurt and he was going to go crazy, break, melt, and Thor didn't even seem _winded_. Tony could only hang on, fingers dug into the brink of sanity and consciousness, subsumed in the push-pull and spread wide, the wet slap of their bodies and the rough rumble of Thor's words all that he could hear.

He wasn't sure when Thor finally tired of torturing him and picked up, teeth rasping hard over his shoulder at the first gritty, greedy thrust that went deep enough for him to choke out a whine, stuttering and sharp until Thor let out a husky growl, hand clenched tight enough over Tony's cock to almost - almost hurt - and that was enough. Thor didn't let his grip up even when Tony's cock pulsed in his grasp, didn't move until Tony squirmed weakly underneath him. 

Pagan gods were _awesome_ , Tony thought dazedly, as Thor turned him onto his back to take his mouth again.

V.

Being drafted into Asgard was turning out to be the best vacation ever. With Heimdall keeping an eye on Earth, being off grid was surprisingly more restful than Tony had thought possible. 

It took him half a week to grasp the pure mathematics behind the leyscales, then another half a week to extrapolate the gate systems. Tony had never been so far out of his depth before, even with Heimdall's grudgingly detailed Q&A sessions, and it was _awesome_.

As to the sex? Asgardian air probably did something amazing to Thor's already inhumanly healthy libido. And Tony hadn't even started any wars yet.

But with Tony, things were always good just before they became very, very bad, anyway, and he probably should have expected it.

Thor was sombre the night that Tony had an epiphany about the inertia core, and he'd sat through Tony's chatter about fusion chains and mass-free space-time corridors with an expression so pensive that eventually Tony frowned at him over the roast something that he was ostensibly meant to be eating. 

"Thor?"

"Aye."

"Penny for your thoughts?" Tony asked facetiously, then when Thor merely stared at him blankly, elaborated, "You're pretty out of it today, big guy. Distracted."

"Ah." Thor never bothered with trying to explain himself with excuses - he just went straight to the honest reason. Tony liked that too: it was kind of refreshing. "I spoke to Loki today."

"Oh. That's right, you guys said that he'd be punished or something. Where'd you stash him?"

"He is bound safely." Thor said sadly. "I think that his exile weighed poorly on his sanity."

 _You don't fucking say_ , Tony wanted to drawl, or, _That's usually the case for people who push me out of a godsdamned window_ , but he ate some Unidentified Meat instead and nodded, swallowing. "Uh huh." See. Operational-Tony could learn.

"He always tries to upset me," Thor confided, as though that hadn't already been fucking obvious to Tony and most of Planet Earth by now. "He said that I was wasting my time. That you would never be happy here."

"Well, that's kind of your brother's thing," Autopilot-Tony began soothingly as he munched his way through something that vaguely resembled a drumstick, and then he choked. "Wait. Wh…what?"

"I can see that he is mistaken-"

Tony took in a deep breath, and a gulp of the amber-coloured Asgardian mead on the table for good measure. Operational-Tony tended to think better when slightly tipsy. "Thor. I'm just here to fix the Bifrost." 

"But you are happy here, are you not?" Thor pressed, puppyish like anything. Tony's heart sank and tried to crawl into his boots. He should have known. Once he started to go with the flow, life would usually punch him in the balls.

"I'm human, Thor. My home's on Earth. My friends, my stuff, my company-"

"Once you repair the Bifrost, your friends can visit. You can move your possessions to Asgard. As to your 'company'," Thor frowned slightly, "I do not recall you having ever mentioned it save in complaint."

"I have a _lot_ of stuff," Tony began, and hesitated, biting down on his lower lip. Asgardian tech was so far advanced that Tony had known since the beginning of his stay that he could, quite possibly, spend the rest of his life studying it and never be finished, and the part of Tony that created stuff, that was addicted to the eureka-spark of discovery wanted to stay forever. Weakly, he added, "I can't, Thor."

Thor stared at him carefully. "But you _are_ happy. Right now."

"I _was_ ," Tony retorted, albeit peevishly, then he groaned and rubbed his hand up over his face when Thor sat back, as though satisfied. "In a sort of 'yay, cool holiday!' happy, not a 'I want to stay here forever' happy, all right?"

Thor nodded, puppyish again. "I understand."

"Really?" That had been easy. "Great!"

"I need only to persuade you."

"Exac… no, wait," Tony glowered at the now-empty mead mug. Asgardian alcohol was a silent killer. "Thor, let's talk like reasonable adults, all right?" 

"Aye." Thor looked attentive.

Christ. There were probably few ego highs in the world better than having the undivided attention of a Norse God, let alone one as drop dead _gorgeous_ as Thor. Tony swallowed hard. Operational-Tony was threatening to cede the field. "Er. Well. Ahem. So. We're establishing the premise that I can't live in Asgard, right? I mean, I'm from Midgard. This is Asgard. Aliens don't get to visit often, right?" Tony congratulated himself. Operational-Tony was still functional enough to extrapolate.

"Once you repair the Bifrost, you would have built yourself a sufficient exception to the rule," Thor said encouragingly. "And you would have gone far to revoke the general conception of Midgardians as uncivilised barbarians."

"Okay," Tony hesitated, then tried, "Besides, _you_ could stay in Midgard, right? You didn't seem to hate it there."

"Tony," Thor said wryly, even as Tony immediately realized how stupid that had sounded. "In your world… you are a very rich man. An influential one, certainly, but no more than that. In Asgard, I am heir to a throne that bestrides an entire world. Whenever my Father is indisposed, I must stand in his place. Beyond that, I have other duties. _I_ cannot stay in Midgard."

Embarrassingly enough, Tony's stomach did an ugly flip at that, and he curled his hands tightly around the flagon. "Okay. I get that." Because logically, he should have seen that coming, obviously. "I can visit. Once I fix the bridge," he added lamely, because it wasn't as though Tony Stark actually dealt very well with relationships in general, let alone distant ones, and hell, when had this rather comfortable… _arrangement_ with Thor worked into something more, anyway? 

Because he _was_ going to miss Thor: the arc reactor trick aside, Tony would miss that eternally boyish enthusiasm, the extravagant gestures, the total disregard of Tony's wealth, status or power, that endearingly intense approach to Understanding Alien Cultures, even all the random craziness that seemed to follow Thor around like a nervous puppy. The thought of never seeing Thor again, or only randomly seeing Thor during the occasional Avengers shtick ached far more than Tony thought that it would; it made him want to walk away and curl up somewhere with a healthy share of the closest high concentration liquor and possibly never wake up again until things were back to what they were.

Still. Good things didn't tend to last. Tony _should have known_.

Thor was watching him with that dangerously sober intensity again. "You could," he said, with a sort of terrible gentleness that made Tony's throat clench up.

"Besides," Tony tried warming towards his subject, "Your parents didn't seem keen either, did they? I mean, there was kind of a general crowd reaction when you told them where I was from. Sort of on the scale between 'astonishment' and 'disgust', I thought." 

Thor frowned slightly, then he shook his head and pulled himself up from the table. "They already knew where you were from. It was evident from the beginning - Father had to summon us both from Midgard."

"Oh, come on," Tony drawled, "You guys were talking for a bit, and then you said something and it was like the puppy had pissed on the rug." 

"Anthony," Thor said patiently, "My parents - and the Hall - reacted with surprise when I named you ' _sváss_ ', or 'beloved'."

"Oh." Tony gaped, floored by the revelation, which prompted Tipsy-Tony to add, "The way everyone was going on about it, I thought it meant 'pet'."

"No," Thor leaned in to brush a kiss against his forehead, which Tony took with a numb stillness, then Thor nodded at him and strode out of their chambers, probably towards the balcony.

Beloved.

Really.

 _Really_?

Thor had never mentioned it before. And, okay, maybe there was that business with inscribing sigils, and there were all those stupid Disney Princess jokes that Clint liked to crack when they were around, but _seriously_? Thor - Thunder God Thor - _loved_ him?

That never tended to end well.

Grimly, Tony dragged over the rest of the keg of mead. This was going to be a two flagon problem. Or three.

VI.

Heimdall seemed considerably cheered without even outwardly changing his expression when Tony poured himself into the ley chambers in the morning, probably looking like death, extremely hung over. Evil asshole. 

Still, at least Heimdall wasn't usually for talking when not prompted, and Tony spent the day in blissful silence, taking new readings from the core and extrapolating data from Selvig's records. At night, Thor was conciliatory, didn't mention anything at all of the previous night, and warily, Tony settled back into the holiday routine with relief. 

The breakthrough came after a week or so, when he hooked up one of the spare miniature arc reactors to an amplification leyscale, then connected it to the prototype kinesynthetic relay that he had built around the inertia core based on Selvig's plans and Tony's own understanding of the original Bifrost bridge. The machine rumbled when it started up, each relay ring beginning to spin, rotating faster and faster as they slotted into synch on wave space, then there was a drumming, discordant roar as an unstable blue beam of distorted light shot forward from the machine and abruptly curved, earthing itself on another leyscale.

One of the waypoint ones, Tony realized - the same sort that had been in Central Park. Fascinated, he rushed over to look, and caught just a glimpse of something dark and deep, dotted with stars, before there was a choked, dangerously grating sound from the machine. Someone grabbed him by the collar even as he turned around, and then Tony found himself yanked with great speed around a pillar.

Annoyed, Tony jerked around to snap at an expressionless Heimdall, and ended up flinching and yelping instead as the world bled _white_.

When his vision returned, Tony noticed that the leyscales around the pillar were smoking gently, even molten at some points, and Heimdall was already picking his way out over the floor, trotting over to the melted wreckage of the prototype relay. The inertia core was intact, but the arc reactor was a bubbling, smoking shell.

"Massive… massive power overload," Tony muttered, still blinking away spots over his vision as he staggered out to survey the damage, astonished. A power surge of that degree from an arc reactor should have taken out a sizeable chunk of the Asgardian _castle_. Instead, it had all been contained by the leyscales.

Suddenly, the Asgardians' decision to move the Bifrost fragments all the way into this chamber didn't seem so crazy after all.

"That was adequate," Heimdall decided, even as Thor landed in the balcony and looked sharply around, then he grinned in happy relief and strode over to Tony.

"Things blew up, nothing unusual," Tony told Thor, then turned to Heimdall. "Adequate? It worked! For a second."

"Hardly. It opened a pathway into unknown space," Heimdall stated, frowning at the smoking inertia core. "We are fortunate that the scales held during the backlash."

"It is more than our engineers managed," Thor pointed out blandly.

"Thank you, that earned you a hundred Tony points," Tony declared, ego duly stroked. "While _you're_ in the red."

Heimdall ignored him, instead turning to regard Thor. "Perhaps I was mistaken about your intentions, Thor Odinson." 

"It would not be the first of such," Thor replied, if with one of his broad grins, but Heimdall merely stared back, utterly unemotional, further proof that the man was probably some sort of high tech cyborg or something. Thor's puppyish grins were weapons of mass destruction in their own right. 

"I will inform the Allfather of his progress. Perhaps further resources can be authorized. Assistants, perhaps."

"You mean I didn't have to be pulling _all_ the weight by myself all this while?" Tony asked, incredulous, but Heimdall merely inclined his head at Thor and padded off.

"It was a test," Thor stated placidly.

"I hate tests," Tony sulked. "JARVIS, what's salvageable?"

"Presumably a doorstop or an interesting conversational piece can be recycled from the remnants of the reactor, Mister Stark."

"Not _you_ too." Tony stared at his bracelet, betrayed, even as Thor chuckled and circled an arm around his waist.

"Deliberations will take time," Thor told him, a quirk to his mouth that Tony had long learned to associate with Thor's particular brand of insanity. "Put on your suit. Let us go hunting."

"I don't think I put a billion dollars into the Iron Man tech to use it to blast holes in alien species for fun," Tony pointed out, though he padded over to the silver suitcase propped against a corner. "And what sort of animal needs to be hunted with repulsors, anyway?"

Answer: undead vikings. Really.

Other vanilla planets like Earth had stuff like locust outbreaks, with maybe the occasional alien invasion or Doombot plague. The Asgardian planetoid had 'draugr swarms', hordes of surprisingly fast-moving risen dead, apparently animated by fluctuations in dark energy. Translation: Whenever Odin manipulated dark energy to 'port people to and from Midgard, unbelievable shit happened. 

The Warriors Three and Sif were already in the thick of it, clearly entertained, holding position on a hill and hailing them with waves when Thor landed in a crackle of lightning. Tony opted to stay in the air, blinking as the ranks of dead continued to creep inexorably up the hill, axes waving, and okay. 

Maybe, just maybe, this was kind of awesome. 

"JARVIS, multiple targets," Tony squinted at the targeting computer, then he grinned. "High explosives."

VII.

Several of the Asgardian engineering team were total douchebags at the start, up until Heimdall took them aside, possibly to put the Fear of Cyborg into them. After that, the work progress was more like it. Tony no longer had to spend time trying to understand Asgardian tech with minimal Heimdall supervision; now the fiddly things like stable power sources and leyscale manipulation could be left to the experts. 

The only real downside to taking on a team was the sharp reminder of exactly _who_ Thor was. Heimdall seemed to treat everyone with the same flat disinterest, and the Warriors Three and Sif seemed to just react to Thor with rowdy camaraderie, but the Asgardian engineers always shut up whenever Thor appeared, bowing their heads and averting their eyes respectfully.

"Why is it that we evolved democracy and you guys are still in the Middle Ages?" Tony complained one night after dinner. "Monarchy," he added, when Thor looked blank.

Thor shrugged. "Odin is the Allfather, the all-wise. The pantheon is eternal."

"And you guys don't have civil unrest or anything? Revolutions?"

"Father rules fairly and justly." Thor seemed puzzled that Tony was even asking. "There is a natural order to things."

"Successions."

"Aye." 

"So aren't you probably meant to marry someone with a womb? Make little Asgardian princelings? The way the stories go," Tony added, "I think you actually married Sif and had three kids in total or something."

"You Midgardians," Thor was always extremely entertained by Nordic myths, for some reason; he was grinning now. "Immortality makes the question of succession somewhat less urgent."

"But it doesn't take the question out of the picture."

Thor's smile slipped, and Tony swallowed, forcing his eyes to keep on the level. Finally, Thor sighed. "Anthony, if you do not wish to remain on Asgard, then I will not keep you." 

"But you won't come back to Midgard with me."

"Not forever." Thor reached over to pick up one of his hands, and all right, it was possibly girly as all hell, if you discounted how _big_ Thor's hands were, the rough calluses from Mjolnir, the easy strength as Thor turned his hand palm up, and carefully drew a downward stroke, then from the tip, an angular wave, like an open, sharp-tipped 'R'. "It is not my path."

"I'm beginning to regret mentioning anything about the Bifrost now," Tony grumbled, and when Thor chuckled, he added irritably, "When I said I was going to build it, I really was just going to make something that'll let you go home now and then to check on the parental units or whatever. I didn't think... I didn't think that anything was going to _change_." And all right, that sounded pathetic as all hell. "I was kinda happy the way we were."

"It couldn't last. Even before, my father was growing impatient. My duties in Asgard were calling me." Thor had turned his hand over, and was writing something else, a line, an angled stroke. "You give me much joy," he continued, and even as Tony shuddered convulsively, tried and failed to pull back his hand, Thor smiled. "You are not like any being - Asgardian, Midgardian or more - whom I have ever met. And you are beautiful."

"You just like how you can cheat with the lightning trick," Tony said, a little faintly, because frankly, that should have come out lame and sappy; it should've sounded so awkward that he'd have had an excuse to start laughing it off. It seemed that Norse Gods were immune to narrative convention.

"I want you to stay," Thor squeezed his hand. "But if you cannot, then I will not force you. You should be free to do what you wish, even if I am not."

"Let's forget that right now," Tony finally managed to pull back, trying for humour. "Got more immediate things on my mind. Like the aforesaid lightning trick."

Thor stared at him for a moment longer, until Tony's heart tried to beat faster around the reactor, until he started to sweat, nervous, wrung out, yeah, just a little bit frightened, then Thor bowed his head and rose to his feet. He fumbled the first kiss before he got into his stride, and then Thor just picked him up, with that insane, easy strength of his which was always so fucking _hot_ and propped him up against the dining table, his grin puppyish again as he raked Tony with a hungry once over and tipped his chin up to score his neck with bites.

"Do you want to walk on the morrow?" Thor asked, like he was asking Tony to pick out shirts or something, and Christ, that low, husky rumble? Hot. That matter-of-fact tone? Tony knew from _fantastic_ experience that Thor was, in fact, more than capable of fucking him into next Saturday without really even breaking a sweat.

Hot. And definitely tempting. 

"You can carry me to the lab. Scandalize Heimdall." Tony said breathlessly, fingers dug into Thor's cape as Thor worked a stinging, wet path down to the hollow of his neck. 

"Heimdall is far past being able to be shocked by anything," Thor noted, big fingers working on Tony's belt, navigating the buckle carefully.

"Now you've just made me determined," Tony retorted, breathless, and had to press the heel of his hand hard against his dick to prevent an embarrassment when Thor merely grinned at him, all playful mischief as he sank down onto his knees, running his big hands up Tony's thighs, and yeah, this? Tony could go with this for the rest of his life.

He wished that he couldn't.

VIII.

With actual Asgardian help, Tony's prototype evolved quickly. The trick wasn't to try and replicate old tech precisely, but to achieve the same function with an improved version of existing tech. Existing _Asgardian_ tech, sure, but still. Watching the Bifrost get rebuilt was kind of cool. The Asgardians seemed to have eschewed the whole business of cranes and lifts, inventing some sort of movable precision stasis field that could be controlled from something no bigger than a gauntlet. Tony made JARVIS take extensive notes, watching the whole process avidly. The Iron Man Mark V suit was going to be _awesome_. 

The test metal cube that they shot off using Bifrost 2.0 was never going to be the same again, but principally, the Bifrost _was_ working now, and apparently the Asgardian engineers were pretty confident that they could come up with some sort of slowing down function or a shield. Heimdall dragged Tony bodily away from the cluster of engineers arguing theory and glowered at him when he opened his mouth to protest.

"The Allfather will see you now."

Thankfully, Tony had thought to wear his armour just in case the test run of Bifrost 2.0 had been as explosive as his first working prototype, so it wasn't so much a long walk back to the castle as a short jet. Court was already assembled - even Thor was standing beside the throne, on the opposite side of it as his mother, and flashed Tony a quick grin as Tony landed and flipped up the faceplate.

"Hope I didn't keep everyone waiting," Tony quipped, "But has anyone heard about conference calls? Because I was kind of caught up." 

"You are to be congratulated," Odin ignored Tony's sad attempt at levity. "Anthony Howardson, you have accomplished a feat that has been beyond the ability of our best engineers."

"If you're going to start granting boons, the first thing I want is for you guys to stop calling me that."

Odin glowered at him briefly, before leaning back against his throne, already looking weary, turning to glance at Thor. "I thought that you had gained prudence, my son." 

"I have, Father," Thor replied placidly. "The Bifrost is close to what it was before; Modr assured Heimdall that a solution to the speed of re-entry would be presented in a mere matter of hours. More importantly, we have the records and the wherewithal to build more Bifrost bridges. Planetary travel need no longer be regulated to only the few. Asgard need no longer be isolated. Our civilisation may evolve."

There was a rippling murmur through the guards and the few Asgardians attending Court, and even Tony raised his eyebrows when Odin glanced at him. "By the way," Tony said quickly, " _That_ bit wasn't from me. I was just here to fix your toys."

"With our immortality and our isolation," Thor continued, "We have lost our curiosity. We have lost the innovation that built our civilisation to what it is now, only to stagnate. We need the universe, Father."

"I must consider this," Odin shot Thor a pointed stare. "Your sojourn in Midgard has made you wayward, and this on the cusp of wisdom."

"Insight cannot be gained from seclusion." 

"You have your duties, now that you have returned. Whims can only run so far." Odin turned back to Tony, his lips thinned. "And you, mortal. Asgard finds itself in the rare situation of owing a Midgardian a debt. You will always be welcome here, Anthony Howardson. And if there is some form of repayment that you wish, name it. The tesseract is but one of our treasures - we have more."

"Well, er," Tony fumbled helplessly, and then, because Operational-Tony had clearly decided not to put in any overtime, said, "Thor," and then when Odin frowned and Mrs Odin's hand flew up to her throat, promptly started babbling. "Er, I mean, I'll really like Thor to go back to Eart... to _Midgard_ with me, but not in a, I mean, when I meant that I didn't mean in some sort of _indentured_ way or something but kind of like the 'if he wants to go too' and... yeah, I think I'll stop talking now." 

Odin frowned at Thor, who was grinning again, _beaming_ , even. "A favour for a favour, Father."

Odin's frown deepened, and he said something sharply in Asgardian. Thor replied calmly, nodded when Odin snapped out a curt phrase, then Odin sighed explosively and turned back to look at Tony. "Is this what you want, Midgardian?"

Tony glanced over at Thor, whose grin broadened as he inclined his head slightly, and suddenly, wryly, Tony felt that maybe, just maybe, Thor had learned something from his adopted brother that was more than just sorrow. "Yeah." 

"Then I give you leave to return to Midgard," Odin addressed Thor heavily. "And I trust that your vision for the future of our people is not rooted in petty vanities."

"With your blessing," Thor replied formally, then added a phrase in the Asgardian tongue. Behind Odin, Thor's mother smiled, brief and quick, though Odin snorted and waved dismissively. Thor bowed, and padded down from the throne to Tony's side, arching an eyebrow when Tony blinked at him dumbly for a moment. Oh. Right. Throwing the throne a jaunty salute, Tony let Thor splay a palm at the small of his back, nicely possessive, and lead him out of the great hall.

"Well spoken, Anthony Howardson," Thor noted, when they stepped out of the double doors. Laughter winked in his eyes even as his expression remained sober. 

"I'm withholding sex for the near future," Tony retorted, albeit half-heartedly, still disbelieving. Thor was going back to Earth with him. _Thor_. "What happened to all that talk about _duty_ and being crown prince of a planet?"

"Ah," Thor could really work a look of innocence. Big guy had unexpected depths. "I will of course return should Father fall into the Odinsleep. But many of my allocated duties are administrative. I feel that I can serve Asgard better for now by exploring new ideas." 

"Jesus. I can't believe that you played _everyone_. I can't believe that you played _me_."

"I," Thor clapped him heartily on the back, chuckling now, rich and playful, "Will endeavour heartily to 'make it up' to you, as your people term it."

"You'd better fucking remember it," Tony growled, as he clenched his gauntleted hands in Thor's cloak, heady with joyous exhilaration.

IX.

"Virginia Hanksdóttir," Thor greeted Pepper with happy enthusiasm when she walked through the lift into the penthouse suite of Stark Tower, clipboard held before her like a battering ram. "Well met." 

"You've got to wean him off that habit," Pepper told Tony, who was sprawled on a couch, happily organising the scanned data from the Asgardian tech and trying to correlate the stasis field theories into Earth materials. 

"Tried. Hi, Pep. Nothing burned down when I was gone?"

"I'm glad to say that Stark Industries shares actually went up when you were gone," Pepper retorted tartly, padding over to confiscate Tony's champagne, taking a sip before she handed it back. "Maybe you should take long sabbaticals more often. And please tell me that the trip produced commercially viable ideas."

"Lots," Tony said distractedly, then he frowned when Thor reached over to shake Pepper's hand roughly. "Whoah there, Thor. Careful with the ladies."

"I'm fine, Tony," Pepper carefully extricated her hand, however. "I gather things went well, Thor?"

"Your suggestions all bore fruition, milady," Thor declared brightly. "Not even my Father saw anything amiss."

"Wait. Wait, wait." Tony frowned at Pepper. " _Pepper_?"

"I might have given Thor some relationship advice," Pepper told Tony loftily. "And some strategic advice about handling bosses."

"Holy shit," Tony breathed, impressed. "I _knew_ that plan was kinda a touch out of Thor's usual league."

"I gather he carried it out pretty well." Pepper patted Thor gingerly on the shoulder. "And you fixed their Bifrost thing, Tony. So, good work all round, team. And, of course, I'll take that debt you mentioned under advisement, Thor. Especially, oh, for stuff like getting Tony to meetings on time and acceptably sober."

"Very well," Thor intoned seriously, and Tony choked.

" _Pepper_..."

"Admit it, if I left the two of you to it, something would have flamed and burned pretty spectacularly," Pepper pointed out, the twist to her mouth wry, even as Tony remembered sharply why he'd once been in love with her, why he still did love her, just a bit. "And you don't tend to appreciate things until you think that you're going to lose them."

"Thanks," Tony offered, sincerely, and Pepper reached over to squeeze his wrist. 

"Don't mess this one up, Tony." 

Pepper left when blueprints were signed off and she'd extracted several promises from Tony to show up at the main laboratory tomorrow to talk about Asgardian tech integration, and Tony was still shaking his head when the lift doors pinged close. "You and Pepper. I don't believe it."

"I can see why you love her," Thor noted.

"Thor-"

"Just as I can see why what the both of you had did not last," Thor added, pulling Tony over when Tony set down his glass, to straddle his lap. "I am, however, relieved that I did not have to challenge her for you."

Tony chuckled, leaning over to rest his forehead against Thor's, resting his arms over his shoulders. "Yeah, because I wouldn't have put my money on you, big guy."

Thor grinned up at him, bending to brush his lips over the glow of the arc reactor, making Tony yelp and jerk at the spark of energy, even through his shirt, big hands kneading over his hips to his ass, and Thor was definitely going to end up killing him someday like this. Growling, he shoved at Thor's shoulders until Thor pulled back and kissed him, hungry and rough again as though they hadn't had a quick fuck in the shower just a few hours ago, Tony braced against the tiles with the hot water drumming over his shoulders, gasping and begging.

Impatient, Thor didn't even bother working Tony's jeans off all the way; he sucked on his big fingers to slick them up and pressed them into Tony, chuckling when Tony whimpered and arched to take Thor deeper, still wet and loose from the morning and Gods, he needed _more_. Tony moaned into the next kiss, deep and toes-curlingly slow and a big hand was curved over the back of his head, just holding him in place, hot and rough as Thor rasped teeth playfully over his lip and licked into his mouth.

"I can take more," Tony stuttered, when they broke for air and Thor pressed his fingers knuckles deep, rough and thick and good but not _enough_ , not by a long shot, "You want to put your cock inside me, don't you, yeah, I know you do," he whispered harshly against Thor's ear as Thor rumbled out a low moan, the big hand around the back of Tony's skull tightening briefly, "Could just hold me up and thrust in and make me take it, you're so much stronger than me, fill me up with nowhere to go and you know, you know I'll love it-"

"Patience, _sváss_ ," Thor's tone, however, was husky and tight with lust, his gorgeous eyes blown wide, the endearment tugging an answering warmth wire-tight within him, making Tony lightheaded.

"Patience is for the weak-willed," Tony shot back, squirming pointedly until Thor laughed, dragged down his pants and set him in place, a hand on his hip to guide him as he let Tony lower himself down, one thick, amazing inch after another until Tony was panting in high, rasping gasps of ecstasy as he sat all the way down, hilted. "Oh. Oh. That's good, fuck, so good."

"Show me," Thor rumbled, hands wrapped over Tony's hip bones now, stroking, tender, and Tony could never turn down a challenge. The angle was shot and his jeans were still kinda in the way but the way Thor _growled_ when Tony pulled himself almost all the way up and then sank back down _deep_ with an applied use of gravity and his weight? Awesome. 

It didn't take long before Tony was riding Thor with his teeth bared and his fingers clawed deep into Thor's shoulders, keening whenever Thor surged up to meet him, there would be bruises in his hips tomorrow to match all the hickeys on his neck and he wasn't going to last, not watching Thor like this, gorgeous features wound tight with lust and watching him with such painfully open honesty, as though Tony was the most amazing thing in the world. He could feel his chest ache as his heart tried to beat faster, his throat felt raw and Christ, he was lucky, damned lucky to have this.

"Not, not yet," Tony protested, when Thor impatiently tugged up his shirt, tossing it aside, "Don't need it, I'm close, c'mon," he hissed, when Thor mouthed up over his jaw to crush a sloppy kiss against his lips that made him groan when they let up. He could feel Thor pulse, within him, even as he ground down again and he was gasping, "C'mon, fuck, I wanna feel it, Thor, c'mon," and Thor was growling as he bit down hard over Tony's shoulder and held him down, shaking.

"The noises you make," Thor whispered, his grin lopsided and raw with affection when he caught his breath, held Tony down and watched him squirm and whimper. "You want more."

"I'm close," Tony panted, begging for another kiss with parted lips, "Close."

"I know," Thor smiled, and Tony could feel fingers stroking over his stretched hole, over the come that was beginning to leak out around Thor's softening dick, filthy and intimate and he was shivering, choking on his next breath, shattering as Thor brought wet fingers up to press them over the reactor to pulse a crackle of energy up into his palm. 

Tony slumped down, exhausted, ignoring the scrape of denim and the filthy mess, cheek plastered against a broad shoulder, fighting for air, eyes glued to the spark of electricity that danced from Thor's palm in an arc to his forefinger and back, then Thor closed his hand into a fist, absorbing it. The palm that stroked down over Tony's back felt like it was just about to burn, it was that hot, and holding Thor's gaze, _knowing_ now, finally, Tony arched up to press into it.

Thor made a low, rumbling sound, maybe of pleasure, maybe of acceptance, warm and inviting, like the first storm of the season even as he rubbed the pad of his thumb over the arch of Tony's spine, and yeah, Tony could definitely get used to this.

**Author's Note:**

> Uh. Hope you guys enjoyed that. ^^ I love writing Thor, but my brain is only really able to match him up easily with Tony, haha. I do seem to fall into all the micro ships. D:


End file.
